Dikran Kouyoumdjian was an Armenian born in Ottoman Bulgaria in 1895, whose wealthy family fled to Britain in 1901 in the face of the Ottoman persecution of Armenians.

He was educated at Malvern College and after a brief period at Edinburgh University he moved to London to become a writer, adopting the pen name Michael Arlen.

He is most famous for the hugely best-selling, controversial novel "The Green Hat", set against the upper classes of England in the post-World-War 1 era.

It tells of doomed Iris Storm. Michael Arlen, in the early 1920s, had a brief affair with Nancy Cunard, grand-daughter of the founder of the Cunard line, and the character (but not the story) of Iris Storm is based on her.

The sequence by the river at Maidenhead refers to "Quindles". This is a very light disguise for "Skindles", the famous pub by the old Maidenhead bridge.

The cover illustration, which is also an ornament inside the original book, is by Arlen. This edition was scanned from a W Collins and Sons hardback edition, 17th impression, August 1926. The original paper jacket of the novel is hard to find, and in any case unhelpful: it depicts a green... no, you're wrong: a green fan.